How to Use Addressable TV to Increase ROA

This article is for the CMOs, the media buyers, the channels owners, and the marketers who are interested in increasing their ROAS and reducing their CPAs.

Back Then

TV has traditionally been a broad-market medium, and measurement of its effectiveness was conducted at the dma or grp level. The impact and value of a campaign was usually measured indirectly or generally inferred based on the geography, the date, and the time of a commercial. It was also based on representative groups that are tracked by companies like Kantar. However, in those days, the marketer was never quite sure which commercial made the impact, or if someone in the household even saw the commercial.

Now we have a way to measure TV impressions, sync it with response data — action taken by the viewer after the commercial, such as visiting a website or submitting an application — and quantify the direct value that comes from the campaign.

In addition, we can provide insights about the responders to help marketers refine their marketing strategy, increase the efficiency of their marketing spend, and improve their overall conversion.

Merkle recently helped a FinTech company conduct an addressable TV test that targeted and presented ads to a select audience based on qualified demographic and geographic information. Through this testing, we established a way to measure the effectiveness of the campaign, from impressions to conversions.

We can tell what program someone was watching, what channel it was on, the time of day, and how long that person watched the commercial.

We can also tell if the same person visited the brand’s website, and can then match them to TV conversion data.

Results

Our test showed that the targeted and addressed audience had a 35 percent increase in starting the application process compared to the holdout group that did not receive any impressions. What’s more, we saw a 50 percent increase in submission of the loan application compared to the holdout group. The value of the conversions was much more than 50 percent higher with the targeted audience.

What’s Next

We’re refining and testing this brand’s messaging (testing addressable TV with two different messages), improving its targeting using response and conversion models, and test various products and segments. The goal of increasing overall response and reducing cost per acquisition (CPA). The developed process provided the crucial information that further informed audience targeting for mass-media buys (channel, show, time of day). The future of TV advertising has arrived. And it’s addressable and measurable.